Whether you’re developing an app, a website, or any other digital platform for your business, you need to design a perfect logo by which your target customers can identify your brand. A logo is also important for grabbing people’s attention and making a solid first impression.
You can even make your logo more appealing by animating it. An animated logo is more recognizable, unique, and memorable. With the increasing competition in business, you need to make your brand easily identifiable and memorable.
So, even as you learn more innovative ways to promote your brand and make more sales, you need to learn how to make animated logos. Because you’re busy trying to grow your business, you should leave the work of designing and animating logos to experts who have the required skills and creativity to create unique logos for you.
Fortunately, you can now find qualified, skilled, and experienced logo animation specialists on Guru–the leading freelance job site in the world. On this platform, you’ll find logo animators with years of experience in this field of graphic design, who are willing to work remotely to get your projects done quickly and conveniently.
So, as much as it’s important to understand how to animate a logo in after effects, you should concern yourself with finding reliable and effective logo animation services. When you’re hiring a logo animator, there are several important considerations to keep in mind:
Tips for Hiring a Logo Animator
Logo animation requires the animator to use a computer that’s fitted with special tools and features to enable them to carry out their tasks effectively. Therefore, the first consideration you have to make is to ensure that the person you hire for logo animation is computer-savvy.
They should at least have basic computer skills and be proficient in creating moving images that can tell a real story and offer important information about your brand. A good logo animator should at least have a bachelor’s degree in computer science or graphic design, computer animation, or any other related field.
Although animation demands inherent creativity, animators are supposed to undergo training to harness and fine-tune their skills. This allows them to familiarize themselves with all the necessary animation tools and platforms.
Before you hire a logo animator, check their portfolio to see if their skills and creativity match your project needs. They should have good communication and interpersonal skills because they have to collaborate with your marketing and IT department to generate an effective logo.
How to Animate a Logo
You can only hire qualified and skilled logo animators if you understand how the whole animation process goes. This way, you’ll be able to review and test their skills during the interview. Here are the important steps to take when animating a logo:
Preparing the Logo File
Start your logo animation in your preferred logo design software like Adobe Illustrator. This ensures that your logo file is ready for animation. Keep your logo source files in vector format so that they can easily be altered without lowering the quality of the image. Your logo file should be layered to allow you to create sophisticated animations easily.
Importing the Logo File
Because you’re animating your logo in after effects, you have to import the file into the after effects interface. This interface may appear complex for the first time but it only consists of a few important components like the tool panel, project panel, composition window, timeline, and control panel.
You can import your logo file by simply dragging and dropping it into the project panel. Alternatively, go to ‘File’ > ‘Import’ > ‘File.’ You’ll get a dialogue box that allows you to import the logo file as ‘Footage’ and ‘Merged Layers.’
Setting Up Composition
Composition is the container that helps you to create layers, edit, and apply animations to media files. Think of it as a scene within a movie–each composition should have a separate timeline. Because your logo animation is a short production that is just a few seconds long, it only needs two or three compositions.
Animating Keyframes
Keyframes are the markers you set along the timeline to identify the start and end of states for the animation. This step is particularly important when you’re creating a fade-in animation. This type of animation uses different attributes that are attached to an object; these attributes change over time.
Animating Your Logo with Shape Layers
Shape layers contain information about pathing, including anchor points and connecting lines. Your ability to deploy this information determines the quality of your animation.
Adjusting Time
Time is important because it describes the movement of your animation frames. The visual display of timing is found in the Graph Editor.
Export Your Logo
When you’re done, export the animated logo by navigating to ‘File’ > ‘Export’ > ‘Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue.’ The After Effects interface will automatically export the logo as an MP4 file.
Ready for expert logo animators to help you with your next project? Guru has you covered–create a job listing today and let qualified animators come to you!
